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Rita Nakouzi and Touré

THE household of Rita Nakouzi, a forecaster of trends, and her husband, Touré, a novelist and pop culture commentator, has doubled since their marriage in March 2005.

In November 2007, Ms. Nakouzi gave birth to their first child, their son, Hendrix, named after the seminal rock ’n’ roll guitarist.

Last March, Ms. Nakouzi, whose childhood began in Beirut and concluded in Connecticut, gave birth to their daughter, Fairuz, named after the contemporary Lebanese singer who has become a cultural idol throughout the Arab world.

Other developments affecting their marriage have included the 2006 purchase of an apartment in a converted Brooklyn firehouse.

“You definitely feel tied to one another when you put a lot of money into a home together,” said Ms. Nakouzi, 34, who works in Manhattan as the director for North America at PromoStyl, a Paris-based trend-forecasting company. “You feel that sense that our lives are intertwined.”

In the course of their marriage, both have become “more willing and interested to make the compromises and sacrifices that are necessary,” said Touré, 38, a contributing writer at Rolling Stone and a special correspondent on “Access Hollywood.”

“She is much more amenable to having the Yankee game on for three hours. At the beginning she’d say ‘Oh, god, no!’ ” And he has taken care to adjust to the environmental causes his wife has embraced.

Ms. Nakouzi, who became a vegetarian at 14 because of what she calls the inhumane treatment of the animals, has as Touré put it, “gotten open to the fact of meat being around.”

“I would not go in and buy it,” she said, adding that she personally remains a “pretty hard core” vegetarian. “But when it comes to the kids, I have to compromise. Being a parent, I feel it’s important that they need to be exposed to everything, and it’s up to my kids to make that decision. I don’t want to sway them.”

The names they chose for their son and daughter reflect 21st-century America’s quintessential blending of ethnicities.

Race and culture really don’t come into play in their relationship, he said. “It’s two people.”

Perhaps that is why in 2003, after dating for two and a half years and becoming serious about weaving their lives together, Ms. Nakouzi found herself blindsided when Touré asserted that any children they had would be black, and therefore she needed to learn about black American culture.

Her response: he needed to learn about Lebanese culture “because your kids will be Lebanese.”

Shortly after that, they flew together to Beirut, where he met some of her family and got a feeling for the country and culture.

Still, both were left to wonder just what their offspring might look and be like. Touré said: “We were walking around in the city looking — do you see any other black and Arab couples anywhere? — to have an idea of what the children will look like. We never saw one.”

Now, when he looks at Hendrix, “I see a black child,” he said. “He is mini-me. Many other people see a mixed child, and I don’t really know what they’re talking about.” As for Fairuz, Touré said, “She may be one of those people who people are constantly asking: ‘What are you? Are you Italian? Are you Brazilian? Are you Israeli? Are you Middle Eastern?’ And just not know where she’s from. This is the miracle of genetics. You roll the same dice twice and get completely different answers.”

Speaking of his wife, whom he had mistaken for Indian when they first met, Touré noted: “As an Arab-American she has to work to make sure they see the totems of the culture. That they learn its language. That they eat the food.”

To that end, Ms. Nakouzi said: “I try to speak to them in Arabic. We have books in French. I try to speak to them in French.”

Meanwhile, because their children are so young, Touré may hold off awhile before talking to his children “about different black people, traditions and history,” he said. “At this point the lessons are, ‘Don’t throw your food on the floor.’ ”

In her work, Ms. Nakouzi said: “I had to do this project in which I talked about how we live in a mosaic society today and that we are all these fragments. Statistics show that the top 10 American cities now are more of a melting pot than we think that they are. This concept used to be in small pockets, and it’s becoming a lot more mainstream.”

“That being said,” she added, “I still think it’s important to their identity to understand those parts. I hope we are entering a post-race era, but for me it’s more about knowing your history and where you came from.”

The couple made “a very conscious decision,” Touré said, in choosing godparents to make sure their son “has a black male role model and an Arab-American role model, and for his sister, the same sorts of things.”

For their children, race will likely be experienced publicly and privately based on the way they look, Touré said. “When they’re at home or alone, thinking about who they are, there are two cultures to wrestle with, two legacies to think about,” he said. “It will be interesting to see where those two groups are in this country in the next 15 to 20 years.”